The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s New York hush money trial is considering additional sanctions against the former president for repeatedly violating a gag order.
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial appeared ready to find the former president in contempt of violating the gag order again on Thursday – though it doesn’t appear that jail time is on the table just yet.
Judge Juan Merchan told Trump’s attorney that no one is forcing him to talk to reporters about witnesses and the jury.
“It was your client who went down to that holding area and stood in front of the press and started to speak,” the judge said. “It wasn’t the press that went to him. He went to the press. He didn’t need to go in that direction.”
The warnings come just two days after Merchan found Trump in contempt of court on Tuesday for nine violations of his gag order and warned that further infractions could result in his being jailed. He fined Trump $9,000 – $1,000 for each violation in which he spoke publicly and posted to social media about witnesses and jurors in the case – and ordered him to delete the posts in question from his Truth Social and campaign websites.
At the time, the judge told Trump that a higher fine would be more appropriate but that New York law does not allow him to impose a fine greater than $1,000 per violation. Therefore, he said, any additional violations would force him to “consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment.”
“The defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” he said.
At issue on Thursday were four additional instances in which the district attorney’s office argued Trump violated a gag order that bars him from making statements that might threaten or intimidate jurors, prosecutors, witnesses, court staff and the families of Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
The four perceived gag order violations include remarks Trump made to reporters at the courthouse and in TV news interviews in which he twice disparaged witness Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer for the hush-money payments, called another witnesses, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, “a nice guy” and said the jury is “95% Democrats” and present a “very unfair situation.”
In arguing for the prosecution, Chris Conroy said that the district attorney’s office is not seeking jail time but that Trump’s remarks continue disrupting the trial and are “corrosive.”
The defendant is talking about witnesses and the jury in this case, one right here outside this door,” said Conroy. “This is the most critical time, the time the proceeding has to be protected.”
In one instance, Conroy explains how Trump selectively answered a question from a reporter on the campaign trail last week specifically so that he could comment on Pecker.
“The defendant thinks the rules should be different for him,” Conroy said.
Meanwhile, Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer, repeated many of the same arguments he made at the first gag order hearing, including that the four statements were purely political attacks and not disruptive to the trial.
In trying to refute the argument that Trump’s comments about Pecker impact other witnesses, Blanche said that, on the contrary, the comments were fact-based and neutral. But the judge rebuffed that characterization.
“It’s not just about Mr. Pecker,” Merchan said, though he added that he’s “not terribly concerned” about that specific violation.
It does not appear that Trump has violated the gag order since Merchan held him in contempt on Tuesday – though he’s certainly flirted with it by continuing to call the trial a political persecution organized by the Biden administration, characterize the judge as “conflicted” and the district attorney as a Democrat who is out to get him.
Merchan did not deliver a ruling from the bench or provide a timeline for when he might decide.